Archbishop Nichols rejects proposal on homophobic bullying

BY ANNA ARCO
THE ARCHBISHOP of Birmingham dismissed the need for specific measures against homophobic bullying in Catholic schools in the Commons last Monday.
Standing before the Commons education committee investigating "citizenship education" Archbishop Vincent Nichols gave MPs his views on a new plan proposed by ministers, which wouldrequire all schools to develop separate policies to protect homosexual children from bullying.
Headteachers are already required by law to have general anti-bullying policies.
Archbishop Nichols, the chairman of the Catholic Education Service, said that it was unnecessary for Catholic schools to adopt concrete policies to protect gay or lesbian children from bullying, citing "a robust policy on bullying of all kinds" as "the best way forward".
"If you begin to pick out particular sections then the list of special policies is going to get very long and there probably would not be too much room on the walls to accommodate it," he said.
According to the archbishop, Catholic schools already have lower instances of bullying than most other schools. Investigators have criticised the poor level of citizenship education in England.
The archbishop gently warned ministers away from
forcing the Catholic Church to assume moral systems that clashed with its own. There could be no such thing as a moral no-man's-land, he said: "I do not believe citizenship should be a morally neutral area in which a whole other set of moral values are subversively introduced," he explained.
When pressed on the subject of homosexuality he was swift to clarify that the Church had no objections to sexual orientation, per se, but objected to all sexual relations outside of marriage.
"The Catholic Church makes a very clear distinction between the orientation of the person and their sexual behaviour," he said. "As to the moral codes concerning sexual behaviour there is a simple principle sexual intercourse belongs within marriage. The Catholic Church would stand very firmly for the equal dignity and rights of a person no matter what their sexual orientation."
On Tuesday he further clarified his statements by saying that he had spoken of a definition of citizenship as "'the active and creative role that every person is called to play in the local, national and global community"'.
He also said in his statement that he was speaking about three specific elements of the citizenship education classes.
These were social and moral responsibility, community involvement and political literacy, all of which, he said, were clearly present in Catholic schools.